<![CDATA[William Richert Films

RE: BURIED ALIVE AT FIRESIDE

RE: MOM IS NOT HER OWN HOME – WHY?

RE: MEDICINES FOR PAIN

RE: ILLEGAL USE OF POWER OF ATTORNEY

DEAR Mr. Hall,

You said you would talk to my brother in law Harry Cornwell after our conversation yesterday around 4 PM, wherein I described in detail my outrage at the virtual incarceration of my mother in law by two of her children without any explanation to her youngest daughter, and without consideration of the money left in her accounts for a death at-home, "I'm glad I kept my money for myself," she told me once, in reference to her last days.

At the time, she didn’t realize that she wouldn’t have access to that money. It would be in the hands of her son in law, overseen by her own lawyer.

I explained that I'd written volumes to both Harry and Teri and David the lawyer about mom and being isolated from her daughter, and about defamatory gossip spread about me.

Also during the past 2 years I wrote at length to David Shacter and Harry C. about Cleone being cut off from all contact with her lawyer, her mail being undelivered, her inability to make phone calls, Harry's anger, missing money, etc. etc. All of this has been stated but ignored.

I even put Cleone’s request to meet with David Shacter on youtube, as I have placed my comments about Fireside on youtube, as a means of communication to the outside world. “Broadcast yourself” says youtube, and what broadcast can be more important than this?

My mother in law is bandaged from a dog bite. There are no dogs in her own house. Did she get a tetanus shot?

As Gretchen is a registered nurse like her mom, it is only natural she should ask for – nay, demand – her mom gets the very best treatment affordable.

Harry and Teri and David are relying on David’s legal advice in all their doings, but I have said that Mr. Shacter is a dirty rat, in the vernacular, and a really dirtier rat to his client of many years, Cleone Eichholz, and all of this has been explained earlier so I won’t add to it now, but will again forward my letters to David Shacter, who has said he does not want to read them.

Her absent lawyer’s silence cannot silence the fact that Cleone wanted to end her days in her own bed.

Right now she may be receiving “round the clock care,” but she is in a frightening environment even to strangers, and hardly able to speak her wishes outside the immediate family circle. I had to put my ear right next to her mouth to hear her labored words “take me home.”

No wonder she wants to go home. 5-star Quality of care at Fireside notwithstanding, you yourself can surely hear the calls from the helpless woman at the railing inside the residence, holding on at a frightening angle in her wheelchair, calling “Help me! Somebody please help me!”

n And you cannot have failed to hear the woman at the far end of Cleone’s hallway screaming obscenities one right after the other, apparently accusing some staff member or other personal of sexual assault – and you know I’m not making this up.

In our only nighttime visit, made the very first day we were able to see her, the calls from other sick or dying patients filled the corridors and I thought about what my sister and brother in law told me: Cleone can see and hear everything so we must be careful what we say.

Okay. But how about being careful about what Cleone herself says she needs in her own gasping voice – that is, if she is still alive as I write this on Thursday, June 5 at 11:221 AM.

Mr. Hall, you told me that I had misspelled names on my earlier email and seemed to be sloppy or spotty in what I emailed you – and I said that I am very emotionally wrapped up in the issue of what happens to Cleone.

You have surely read about how the State of Ohio ceased all death penalty executions until they could figure out the several drug syndrome wherein criminals would be subjected to immobility, being unable to move or communicate, while the next drug proved to be ineffective.

This inability to speak while your body is being externally shut down is considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Yet, as a result of age or lack of care, Cleone is in that same situation, and this helplessness is felt by me and my wife, though not at all the way Cleone is feeling it.

What do you suppose Cleone is thinking when she awakens in the middle of the night, wide awake with only her dark brown eyes popping open, unable to move, listening to the truly frightening calls and screams and painful outbursts, mostly from women, in rooms all around her; Cleone deserted and by herself in half a double room -- while millions of her own money sits in property and bank accounts awaiting disbursement to others.

My own mother did not die this way (I told you about what Teri left on my answering machine in regards to my own mother’s death) and I think nobody should have to die this way.

You said you would talk to Harry and get back to me with a schedule of visiting times, or at least that seemed to be our understanding; also you said you’d have social services contact me.

You haven’t’ called me back since yesterday, though I expressed all my feelings. No schedule of visits has been arranged at fireside. Your residence is still being used as an obstacle.

You said Harry didn’t put us on the “approved list.” Who has Harry put on this list, and why not us when he finally called to tell us where mom was – another snub and power play against his step-sister, the one who grew up in the house, not him.

As a movie star good looking spokesman for Fireside, you also speak for a community of care for elders numbering in the tens of millions.

Though it is not your fault, or caused by Fireside, I think that Cleone is being subjected to unspeakable Elder Abuse of that end-day kind you have to be close enough to hear her breathe to know about.

Of course, you have known about all this since my first letter of complaint to you as Administrator almost 2 weeks ago.

In our phone call, you didn’t reveal exactly when Cleone first arrived in your facility, or the diagnosis that keeps her there.

What vital services/medicines/care have you offered mom that she couldn’t get or afford to pay for on her own??

I understand she may have had to be admitted to Fireside right after an emergency or lung infection: have these symptoms cleared? Is she on antibiotics?

Have you yourself, or Fireside’s lawyers, actually seen Harry’s Power of Attorney? You and your Head of Nursing (I thought he was a cop in disguise, sorry) both say you are acting on this “Power of Attorney” against other members of the family – but where does it say who does what?

I did not start out angry about anybody's treatment of Cleone Eichholz. My righteous fury has arisen over the years, going from plaintive letters to Harry Cornwell to accusatory emails to him and his lawyer about how the two siblings were looting the house and estate.

I wrote about the future cost in litigation and court fees – 250,000 off the top in any litigation, a million or more for a trial -- check it out – costs known to all -- that at the very least ought to make Teri and Harry very careful about their treatment of Gretchen and their fiduciary care of the family home, which contents had great emotional meaning to Gretchen.

Sorry to be so crude as to mention money, but money was the root of this, as the brother and law and sister in law only began their campaign to discredit Gretchen and me after the real estate doubled in Santa Monica. The timeline is significant. I wonder as it’s gone on 10 years – is there some kind of “family RICCO” statute? David should know.

Gretchen managed to remove only a few precious objects from her father and her childhood, along with photos and videos of the family hallway, before getting written notice from Harry she could no longer visit her mother alone.

In fact we did visit Cleone alone when a caregiver was present in the house, and I learned a lot about Harry's angry behavior and Teri's insistence that I was plotting to move mom into a nursing home.

As the entire family knows, I have been videotaping family events for years and years, not excluding my own family in the records. John Goucher has some really good videos of me and Cleone hugging each other. It was only because Cleone was alive and because of possible effects on her that I did not post on youtube the extent of film/recordings.

One thing is sure: Mom did not want to be sent to a nursing home, especially when the rest of her offspring are going to garage sales or riding bikes while she sits alone most of the day and night.

It appeared to incense Teri the last time we visited Cleone that we had visited Cleone the night before without informing her.

This was right before Teri’s outburst and security was called at fireside - what did Teri tell security that got me separated from my wife? -- and interrogated by a Head Nurse?

Certainly at the black heart of all this resides their legal guru David Shacter, self-proclaimed Elder “expert” and beloved former leader of the Bev Hills Bar Association.

I wonder if other Elder clients like Cleone had their true active mental state or medical condition ignored by him in favor of a controlling sibling who could write those future checks – after the client was dead?

Mr. Shacter angrily denied that he would profit from any courtroom trial, as he says he doesn’t do trials; but Cleone’s soon-to-be-former attorney doesn’t disclose whether he ever gets finders fees from other attorneys.

We considered getting a court supervisor/conservator over Mom’s finances and health care but stopped when it became clear that Cleone was still paying her own bills and when she said most convincingly on tape that she was clear in her own mind. She especially believed “Jake” would keep her out of any nursing home.

I doubt that any jury or judge – and I have long ago said that the millions of elderly folks we call baby boomers, and posterity, and truth, and my own possible future in any kind of nursing home, were all aspects of everything I write and film regarding the fate of Cleone Eichholz. I doubt that any jury reading my long written accounts of all that has taken place since 2002 will argue that a great injustice has been done to a defenseless ill woman.

And if some judge or jury or AARP or facebook friend should discover that I have written with conviction that lawyers like David Shacter are redolent of those hagfish that descend upon the corpses of dead or diseased whales that sink to the dark bottoms of the sea; if a judge or jury should read that I have stated categorically that certain lawyers will behave like hagfish until all the bones and bank accounts are gobbled white as porcelain – will they find it in their hearts to disagree?

When I was a kid that was a famous comic book called “Tales of the Crypt” which only the brave kids read because of its dire and scary stories. One of my favorites was about an inventor who created a hospital bed where dying patients under a glass bubble could be provided all the nutrients and painkillers they need to enjoy life’s last moments, and then when they passed away they would miraculously and efficiently bury themselves in the same glass coffin bubble bed. But in the story something went wrong, and the inventor mistakenly buried himself, screaming for help with no loved one to hear.

After finishing the telephone call with you yesterday from fireside I realized that in many ways my mother-in-law is being buried alive.

There is a videotape where Cleone says that nobody is going to put her in a nursing home without a judge and court approval. Yet that is precisely where she is today, if she is still alive, and about this we have a hard time finding out.

While my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and their families enjoy the seaside and garage sales in Santa Monica, and while my self-proclaimed famous triathletes brother-in-law Harry rides his bike up and down the coast, their mother and my mother-in-law Cleone Eicholtz is lying in bed fully conscious, fully able to observe everything around her, like you and me, but almost completely unable to speak or defend herself. In the state of Ohio, even worst criminals don’t get this treatment.

This email comes two weeks after my first to you; nothing has changed; How do you explain this?

Mr. Hall you were courteous yesterday and said you were going to call Harry after our telephone call and call me back. I asked you to use emails because I believe there is a actionable crime being committed against my mother-in-law and my wife by people who are only after money. Actually, they have never denied this. They have never responded to any of my queries and urgent emails. Central to all this is Cleone's own attorney David Schacter.

In telephone calls and letters I pleaded with Mr. Shacter to visit his client Cleone and hear her pleas in person as her phone calls were monitored by Harry's hired household caregiver, hired from a company called “Right at Home,” as she had too much difficulty making calls.

Cleone’s attorney refused to see her. At some time in the past, he prepared a document signed by Clone that gave full powers of attorney to Harry, who is presently the man who could pay him. What was her intention at the time for Harry’s duties regarding last days? Right now she’s in an ipso facto nursing home.

The lawyer knew the day would come when Cleone would no longer to be a will be able to pay her bills. Knowing where his paycheck lies, he allows her to suffer.

He cannot claim he doesn’t know; he gets copies of all my correspondence.

My mother-in-law and I had some great arguments (she’s a Republican) but with great fondness too.

In my visit to her house she knew that I was videotaping some of her last moments because I told her so, and she could see the camera. Since all that I tapes at Fireside is visible, it is visible no privacy was invaded, and shooting was clearly allowed until stopped by Teri. Besides, Cleone would not allow anything in her presence, which she did not approve of.

Yet now she is in a situation where she cannot ask for help and cannot be heard. When I was holding her head in my hands – hard to believe it’s almost 3 weeks ago -- mom said "take me home" and for her sake at least someone heard her, and told her so.

On that last day I saw my mother in law, my sister-in-law left us alone on the terrace so Gretchen could be with her mother alone.

Usually my sister-in-law is at garage sales or shopping in Santa Monica when visiting from Alaska, and when Teri returned she said Cleone and then left in the sun too long even though it was she who left us there, looking for ice for mom. For Cleone, 3 weeks in her condition, that day must seem a lifetime ago, as she survives hour by hour.

If siblings and lawyers conspire with any means to deprive a dying woman of her last wishes and visits with her children so that they might profit in anyway from money she left or furniture she left –without even waiting until the woman is dead --If siblings will not honor their mothers wishes, which they knew so well because they discuss them with her on the telephone -- while yet they insist on taking everything they might possibly including her will which mysteriously disappeared – what is this if not a crime?

This severe family dispute cannot be business as usual at Fireside, at least I hope so; these woeful events cannot be a routine, certainly cannot be the intention of the otherwise excellent facility like fireside or whichever company owns fireside, and this kind of bad intervention has to be called out and made known to the people so that Cleone can still be helped as much as she can today.

As a society we must ensure that no one else will suffer as she is suffering now. Short of calling the cops, and what would they do? – we are helpless.

THE FACTS, A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE

We need to know that mom is getting her medication for pain at the very least. We need to know which medicines what kind what doses when they are given and why she needs to be away from our own bed in our own house. We need to know whether her attorney ignored medical facts or evidence when he told me Cleone was not mentally competent to me, when I have evidence that shows otherwise.

I I do not believe Harry or Teri or David has any evidence that any doctor declared Cleone unable to decide her own fate at that time. Now, of course, they can say anything.

There are blatant facts which remained to be investigated and investigated fully and completely so that my mother-in-law's death does not go without at the very least the final dignity of a full recognition.

My mother-in-law was a wonderful nurse during the great war, she looked after many of our injured or dying young men, and though I was not among those brave men she cared for 50 years ago, I stand in a line with them, to say she will go in peace at last.

Sincerely,

William Richert

Son In Law, Cleone Eichholz